Friday, 18 April 2014

PROMOTIONAL SPOTLIGHT - PATRIARCH RUN BY BENJAMIN DANCER

(All April proceeds from PATRIARCH RUN will be donated to Jefferson County Open School in Lakewood, Colorado. The money will be used by the school's PTSO to bring local authors into the classroom.)

Billy discovers that his father might be a traitor, that he was deployed to safeguard the United States from a cyberattack on its military networks. After that mission, his father disappeared along with the Chinese technology he was ordered to steal–a weapon powerful enough to sabotage the digital infrastructure of the modern age and force the human population into collapse.

Against a backdrop of suspense, the story explores the archetypal themes of fatherhood, coming of age and self-acceptance through a set of characters that will leave you changed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & BOOK

Benjamin is an Advisor at
Jefferson County Open School where he has made a career out of mentoring young
people as they come of age. He wrote the novels PATRIARCH RUN, IN SIGHT OF THE
SUN and FIDELITY. He also writes about parenting and education.

Patriarch Run is a thoughtful and
character driven literary thriller. Think of it as Jason Bourne meets Good Will
Hunting.

Billy discovers that his father might be a traitor, that he was
deployed to safeguard the United States from a cyberattack on its military networks.
After that mission, his father disappeared along with the Chinese technology he
was ordered to steal–a weapon powerful enough to sabotage the digital
infrastructure of the modern age and force the human population into
collapse.

Against a
backdrop of suspense, the story explores the archetypal themes of fatherhood,
coming of age and self-acceptance through a set of characters that will leave
you changed.

GUEST POST

I teach writing to
high school students. But I don’t see myself as a high school teacher. My job,
as I see it, is to mentor young people as they come age.

I’m an Advisor at Jefferson County
Open School in Lakewood, Colorado. I’m the English teacher. But the
kids in my classroom are looking for more than English. They’re looking for
meaning. They’re looking for something real.

Right now I’m
teaching The Omnivores Dilemma by
Michael Pollan. I use the text to teach the kids to read. I use the ideas in
the book to teach them to think. And the story Pollan tells about food...I use
that as a guide for our own educational adventures in the food chain. Like
Pollan does in the book, we visit farms. Food markets. I bought the kids
McDonalds then drove them to a feedlot with a 100,000 head of cattle that
filled our nostrils with the stench of feces and urine. The poop was piled
twenty feet high by tractors. The cows were cover in it up to their spines. Our
lungs were singed from the ammonia.

I had the kids eat
the burgers and take it all in.

Later in the semester
I had the students interview their oldest living relatives. Out of that
interview, the students brought traditional recipes to class, and we prepared
meals together.

This week we’re
discussing the ethics of eating. I have them justify it: their choice to eat,
which is to say their choice to kill. I do this because I want them to be on
solid moral ground. I do this because I want their bodies to be well.

Why? Because I’m
their English teacher. It’s my job.

I also facilitate a
writers’ group. Because I believe kids need mentors (more than just me), I
partner with Lighthouse
Writers Workshop, a Denver based community, to bring local authors
into my classroom.

We meet at lunch
every Wednesday, the writers’ group. This is a very committed group of writers
(some students have graduated and still participate in the group via email from
college). They take their writing seriously and provide one another with
thoughtful, constructive feedback.

Once a month, we have
a guest author. The guest author actually reads the week’s submission and
critiques it, along with the rest of us. Imagine being seventeen years old and
having your story critiqued by a published author.

After the critique
session, we invite any interested student in the school to a craft talk with
the author. After which, the kids get an opportunity to interact more openly.
They get to ask questions about the writing process. About inspiration. About
how to get published.

What’s really
happening is that relationships are being developed. This is the secret to
education. They can pass any law they want at the state or at the federal
level. They can mandate testing. Or they can sell our schools to corporate
enterprises. None of that will fix the problem we have with education in
America.

Because the answer is
this: teaching is about relationships. Kids need mentors. It’s that simple.
They learn from the people they trust.

What happens in this
guest author program is magical. Kids begin to see themselves as writers. They
develop authentic relationships with authors in the community. They have
consultants.

At my school, every
student completes a Career Exploration Passage. It’s one of six rites of
passages each student undertakes to graduate from high school. In the Career
Exploration Passage, as the title indicates, students explore a career. The
project involves an internship, research, consultants, a series of interviews,
a resume. And eventually the student maps out a path to his or her chosen
field.

The beauty of the
curriculum at the Open School is that the students I work with get to consult
with actual professionals. They get to interview our guest authors and develop
relationships that will last long after high school is over.

To make all this work
I went to our school’s Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) and
asked for $50 a month to bring local authors into the classroom. The parents on
PTSO generously supported the program, and they also asked me to consider ways
to raise money to pay for it.

It was a reasonable
request on their part, responsible even, but I had to think about it. What
could I do to help support my own program?

Meanwhile, I went to Lighthouse
Writers Workshop and told them what our PTSO was willing to do.
Lighthouse generously matched my school’s contribution.

So we had $100 a
month to bring local authors into the school. Not much. But money communicates
value. By paying authors what we can, we let them know that we value their
profession. Their work. Moreover, writers are hungry, and, so far, the guest
authors have been grateful for the gig.

Then it finally came
to me a few weeks ago: how to raise money for the program. I had a book release
pending for my literary thriller Patriarch Run.
It occurred to me that I could donate the April proceeds to PTSO and, in that
way, raise money to support the guest author program at the Open School.

Which is what we’re
doing. It’s a good book. It’s a good cause. And we’d welcome your support.

If you’d like to know
more about our amazing school (there have been many books written about it),
let me know. And if you’d like to learn more about me or my stories, you could
drop me a line about that, too.

EXCERPT

Rachel never rode over the summit of the
mountain because of the treacherous nature of that trail. It was against all
rational judgement that she found herself on it now. At tree line the horse
climbed over the ridge, stepped out of the spruce forest and onto the packed scree
that made up the trail from there to the tundra. The mountainside below them
gave way completely to granite cliffs.

The trail snaked along the top.

At the highest point among the cliffs,
with nearly a thousand feet of empty space beneath the hooves of Old Sam,
Rachel spotted two figures several hundred yards in the distance. She talked to
the horse. Said she couldn’t be sure, but it looked to be a man and a
bristlecone pine.

The horse walked on.

“Watch your step, Old Sam.”

As they closed the distance, Rachel
recognized him and saw that he was untying a rope from the gnarled tree.

“You couldn’t have picked a better
view.”

Regan had looked at her once when he
first heard the hooves on the scree, then he went back to his rope. Now he
looked up at her face. Looked the horse over. Then he studied her eyes. She had
divined his purpose.

He looked away. “Yeah, it’ll do.”

The two knew each other, but had rarely
had cause to speak.

“I don’t mean to meddle, but it seems to
me that the rope is ill conceived.”

Regan finished retying the rope to the
tree, tested the knot and asked, “How so?”

“Too much length, and the wind, along
with your own momentum, will lacerate your flesh against the rock.”

He looked over the edge. “That occurred
to me as you were coming up. I shortened the rope.”

“Not enough length, and it’ll be slow
and painful.”

He studied the coil of parachute cord on
the ground and said with very little inflection. “It looks about right to me.”
Then he walked over to a granite boulder.

“Seems you’ve thought it through.”

He sat down and pulled off his right
boot. “We’ll see.”

Rachel reached behind her and took out a
water bottle. Drank. She offered the bottle to Regan with a gesture.

He put out his lower lip and shook his
head almost imperceptibly.

She capped it and put it back.

“Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.” He pulled off the other
boot.

“Why the rope and the cliff?”

“Coyotes.”

“I don’t follow.”

“When I was a kid, coyotes killed my
dog. I heard the fight, but by the time I found her in the dark, they were
already feeding on her guts.” He took off both socks and stood up. “They pulled
her insides out through her anus.” He stepped over to the precipice and
surveyed the valley.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Hi, My name is Sandra, though for my blog I go by an adaptation of my middle name, Jeanz! I live in the UK, started blogging in Aug 2011. I have always loved books!. If a blurb catches my eye I will usually give reading it a go!

About me & my reviews

As of January 2017 all opinions expressed on this blog my own. I do not receive any cash payment for my reviews. I read because we all love reading! Also I no longer use links on my blog through the Amazon Associates Program.